


I've Got a Song

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-19
Updated: 2006-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten unconnected ficlets inspired by random song titles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pop! Goes the Weasel (Wee Singers)

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://community.livejournal.com/housefic_pens/profile)[**housefic_pens**](http://community.livejournal.com/housefic_pens/) is to blame for this (although I didn't always follow their word count restriction). Also, my husband, two kids, and I share the iPod, which accounts for the diversity of musical tastes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set just after the Vogler arc (season 1); 100 words exactly

House is a very intelligent man, but he’s not (completely) omniscient. It therefore takes him almost a minute to figure out why Chase is saying all this to him, about Chase’s part in the entire debacle that was Edward Vogler. Oh yes, Catholic upbringing, confession being good for the soul and all that. House isn’t so sure about that. In his way of thinking, it’s usually the prurient confidant who gets the benefit of confession. The discloser is merely raking fingernails over barely closed wounds. He is utterly unsurprised to find out that Chase is just that kind of masochist.


	2. Vegetarian Soup (Meat Beat Manifesto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 100 words exactly

Wilson has always enjoyed making soup when someone he cares about is sick. Chicken soup is a traditional cure for ailments, and Wilson likes bringing comfort how he can.

Corn, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, okra, lima beans. It’s a bitch to chop it all fresh, but this batch is for House, so Wilson does it.

Peppercorns, cloves, thyme, marjoram. Wilson lines them up on the counter like soldiers. An assault on House through his taste buds and stomach.

No broth needed, just add water. Wilson doesn’t examine why he always leaves out the chicken when the soup is for House.


	3. Pretty Girls Don’t Cry (Chris Isaak)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after Fidelity (episode 1-7)

Cameron looks at the lab table, unseeing. She’s thinking about the things House has said to her, his casual assumptions about her motivations and even her self-image. Because she’s not the pretty one, the work of art. That’s her older sister, the pageant winner, head cheerleader, homecoming queen.

Allison is the sweet one. She’s the one boys come to when they need a shoulder to cry on, the one who’ll bolster their courage, the one they can pat on the head and leave behind, hot in pursuit of the pretty girls. Allison didn’t marry a dying man. She married the first guy who wanted her, the first guy who made her feel she was a little bit pretty, too.

Now she’s met a man who rejects her shoulder and whose appreciation of pretty girls seems barely more than aesthetic. “Maybe he’s gay,” she thinks, and laughs, and shakes herself out of this stupor. The centrifuge isn’t going to calibrate itself.


	4. Retox (Fatboy Slim)

House smoked in college. Because he wanted to, not because of peer pressure, although the instant camaraderie of strangers huddled around cancer sticks always amused him. He was barely at a pack a day when it began to bore him, and he quit without looking back. The edge was gone.

Six months or so later, Crandall shoved a lit cig at him, wanting to free his own mouth for the flaky Miss Something-or-Other. House, nicely toasted from whatever was in the garbage-can punch, forgot it wasn’t a joint, stuck it in his own mouth, and inhaled. The nicotine buzz was immediate, the tingling in his limbs streaking all the way down to his fingers and toes. He bounced on the balls of his feet, enjoying the warm balloon that had taken up residence in his skull. It lasted less than a minute, but it was the best minute of the whole damn night.

The first Vicodin after his week-long hiatus was even better than that.


	5. Little Jumping Joan (Wee Singers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after Fools for Love

The anxiety started in junior high. No precipitating incident, really. Maybe a surge of hormones? Whatever the cause, it was strong, almost crippling. And Jimmy wouldn’t tell anyone, so he had to find his own ways to cope.

The days were always easy: tons of people around, always someone who wanted to share lunch, or jokes, or class notes.

Nights, though, were much harder. After the knock-down battle the previous year to get his own room, Jimmy had to wage a covert war of manipulation to get his parents to make him share a room with his brother again. Then in college, he “forgot” to apply for a single room, twice. By his junior year, when it would’ve looked strange to still be sharing a room, he’d found a new solution.

Women.

They were lovely, and intriguing, and generally easy for him to persuade. He overlapped them, for a while, the better to keep every night filled. When Jennifer caught him “cheating” (honestly, he’d never said she was the only one, but she’d definitely assumed), he found a friend’s couch worked just as well to let him sleep peacefully.

But of course, even in college, there are limits to how long you can do that. So on to the next woman, and the first marriage, the second, the third, and the first patient (was he thinking _at all_?), with House’s couch in between.

The empty hotel room is a challenge he’s finally made for himself – to see if he can even hear himself any more, after all these years of using others to drown his inner voice out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This song's lyrics: "Here I am, little jumping Joan. When nobody's with me, I'm all alone."


	6. St. Louis Blues (Louis Armstrong)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set before the series; double drabble - 200 words exactly

“St. Louis? Who the hell honeymoons in St. Louis?”

Wilson sighed and kept packing. “Bonnie’s family is in St. Louis.”

House flopped back on Wilson’s bed and groaned. “Who the hell honeymoons near their new spouse’s family? God, you’re pathetic.”

“Get off my clothes.” Tugging firmly, Wilson managed to get his jeans out from under House, who showed no signs of moving. Not soon. Or ever, really. For an athletic man, House certainly knew how to plant himself lazily where he’d most interfere.

Like a cat, Wilson mused. A rather loud and yowly cat. Siamese, maybe.

“Earth to Wilson!” House’s fingers snapped in his face; Wilson swatted them away. “You haven’t given me the number where you’ll be.”

Wilson reorganized the suitcase slightly and then started rolling his t-shirts. “House, it’s my honeymoon. I’m not going to spend it on the phone listening to you bitch.”

“So you’ll spend your entire honeymoon making polite conversation with the in-laws but won’t spare a moment for your own friend? Nice.” House turned his head away sulkily.

“You’re the genius puzzle-solver.” Wilson pulled another piece of clothing out from underneath House. “If something _really_ important happens, you’ll figure out how to find me.”


	7. Ruby Dear (Talking Heads)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after Who’s Your Daddy?

Wilson could think what he liked, but House really had intended just to talk to Crandall’s girlfriend. He’d let her in and waved her to the couch. In retrospect, he probably should have refused the joint, but at the time, it had seemed only polite. When they were down to the roach, he looked down at her. He was aiming for paternal and patronizing with his opening, “Ruby Dear,” but Ruby missed it by a mile.

“You know my middle name!” she squealed delightedly.

“What?”

“Deere is my middle name. I can’t believe you knew that! Greg, you’re so sweet.”

“I’m –” was as far as he got before her tongue was in his mouth.

“Hey,” was his next word, and her hand was in his pants.

The next three were “um,” “uh,” and “thanks.” She smiled as she wiped her lips with the tail of his shirt.

He didn’t fully meet Crandall’s eyes again until the man showed up at PPTH.


	8. Cat’s in the Cradle (Ugly Kid Joe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after Fools for Love; 100 words exactly

Every month, Mom sends three pictures. Usually, one picture is recent, and two are from Lisa’s childhood – today’s news, yesterday’s memories.

This month, Mom writes, too. “These are cute! You were so determined and adorable.” It’s an epic, for Mom, and Lisa reads it several times before turning to the pictures.

They’re all from the same incident: four-year-old Lisa dressed up the neighbor’s cat in bonnet and booties and wheeled it around the cul-de-sac. That was one angry cat, but she stuck to her guns and got what she wanted.

Remembering the “NEG” on the test, she starts to cry.


	9. Lover’s Cross (Jim Croce)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after Son of a Coma Guy; 100 words exactly

Wilson needs to man up, grow a pair, House thinks.

There’s doing for others, there’s love, and then there’s _this_. Sure, Wilson whines, nags, bitches, even yells. But he doesn’t _do_ anything when House kisses him in full view of Caiphas’ soldiers. Doesn’t flinch when House nails his hands to the rough-hewn wood; just crosses his ankles demurely. Doesn’t spit out the vinegar House presses to his lips. All he does is murmur about being forsaken, but even that’s half-hearted.

This has to end. Wilson's not the goddamned Messiah, no matter how much he wants to suffer for House’s sins.


	10. United Nations - E.T.C. (Meat Beat Manifesto)

“I don’t see why we have to go to this stupid diversity seminar,” House whined. “Our team’s like the freaking United Nations.”

“Yes,” Foreman replied, raising an eyebrow in lieu of rolling his eyes, “three white people and a black man. Very diverse.”

“Wilson’s Jewish.”

“He’s also in Oncology. Which does happen to be ethnically diverse, but you can’t count your boyfriend’s statistics as part of your own.”

House scowled and kicked the underside of Foreman’s glove compartment. Foreman wondered, for the twentieth time, how he got stuck driving House to this seminar.

“There’s more to diversity than just skin color,” said House, as he powered the window up and then down again repeatedly. “Diversity of thought is a more relevant concept.”

“You know, I had a white guy make the same argument to me in college, and I conceded him the point.”

“Ha!”

“I might concede it now, too, except you don’t allow diversity of thought. You want us all to think the way you do.”

House straightened up, glared out the windshield, and then focused his gaze on Foreman. Foreman kept his eyes on the road - hands at ten and two on the steering wheel - but could glimpse House in his peripheral vision.

“I want you to think _correctly_ , intelligently, creatively, _brilliantly_. It’s the only way you’ll solve the cases that come to our department. So you’re damn straight I want you to think the way that I do. That’s what will save lives.”

Foreman kept his face calm but smirked inside. He knew all that: he’d joined the team specifically to learn how to think the way House did. It was fun messing with the old guy, though.


End file.
